“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” — Ronald Reagan
A great many people had to do great things through 2020 – a year that put leadership acumen to test. Humanity hoped that the jinx would fade away with the advent of the new year and indeed, news of successful trials of vaccines for the novel coronavirus did arrive towards the end of the year. Hopes had earlier been pinned on herd immunity, evident previously in cases of infectious diseases, but for that to happen, a significant portion of the population would have had to either get infected or inoculated.
Well, the good news for India at the moment is that the regulatory authorities have given the green signal to two vaccines, one made by the Serum Institute and the other, locally produced by Bharat Biotech. The question now is, how soon and how effective will the vaccination drive be? The government plans to inoculate 300 million people by July this year. Once the vaccination drive is underway, businesses and individuals will feel confident enough to begin rebuilding on whatever was lost in 2020.
Yes, humanity did heave a collective sigh of relief to see a year of woe pass by. The past year wreaked a significant degree of destruction across industry sectors, to significantly hurt the global economy. I do, however, feel that 2020 was not all bad. The year forced us to reassess, rethink and mull on the necessity to rebuild. This has been true of all aspects of life. Cracks showed up in areas that required a rejig and forced us to be innovative within limited resources.
The year 2021 will be a year in which discipline will be the only rule for success. In this first issue of the new year, we bring together expert views and in-depth reports on varied industry sectors to be able to map the year ahead.
One of the key themes for 2020 was the rise of digital. It literally took over all aspects of our lives. Well-being was without doubt, another important area in focus and will remain so in the year ahead. We have columns from industry leaders in these and other sectors of industry and the economy who delve into the challenges of the year gone by and point to the opportunities the year ahead offers.
We proffer the Last Word in this issue to Indian yogi and mystic Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, who talks of the issues that riled us all through 2020, like anxiety and the meaning of success. I do hope you enjoy reading the magazine just as much as we did in putting it together.